Nazi Concentration Camps

Holland, Poland, Germany, those are the only 3 i can think of

Unless someone actually lived through it, it would be impossible to fathom the feelings that these people went through. Imagine if you will, being crushed into traincars with hundreds of your fellow man for days, no room to lie down, no food, nowhere to use the toilet and the only way you got water is it being sprayed at you with a firehose. All your personal belongings were confiscated and many of your family members were shot or killed even before you stepped onto the train. This all happened before the arrival at the concentration camps. KeVin Toronto

I would say about 60,000 if not more Jews were killed in the Soviet Union during the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler despised the Jews B/C they refused to believe like he did. It was all about religion. The Jews wanted to keep their religion and did not want to change it. On the other hand, Hitler wanted them to convert to his religion. B/C they refused it caused their death. I won't argue with the numbers because I don't know, but you are wrong about the reason. It wasn't the Jewish religion Hitler objected to. It was the Jewish race. Anyone with one Jewish grandparent was subject to all the discriminatory laws no matter what church they belonged to or what god they believed in. - The Holocaust had nothing to do with religion. - Most souces give a much higher figure than that in the first answer - usually about 1.5 million Soviet Jews killed by the Nazis in WWII (out of a total of about 2.6 million). Over 33,000 Jews were killed in the Babi Yar massacre just outside Kiev, and there were many other such massacres.

Usually, they were first forced to live in Jewish-only appartment houses (in Germany, for example) and subjected to all kinds of petty restrictions, such as not being allowed out of doors between 9pm and 7am, not being allowed to use public transport, to own pets or radios ..... The list was very long. In Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, parts of Belarus and parts of Ukraine they were forced to live in ghettos (Jewish districts) which were surrounded by high walls and guarded. The Nazis appointed Jewish Councils and later these councils had to give the Nazis list of people to be taken away 'for resettlement'. They were then seized by the SS and transported by rail to the extermination camps.

Yes, during the leadership of the"Fuhrer" some Russians were sent to concentration camps if they protested or disagreed to the made decisions.

but mostly the punished people were Jew.

No, the only camps to use ZyklonB were Auschwitz and Majdanek. The other camps, including Trelinka, used carbon monoxide.

the most common way would be to stop - then get beaten to death. Another popular way was to 'run to the wire' (ie to be electrocuted), but the punishment for failing was severe, so it was risky.

1. 'Ordinary' concentration camps were very harsh punishment and labour camps. The men had to do heavy manual work - on inadequate food. Roll-call (two or three times a day) was deliberately spun out to last 1.5-2 hours in order to make the inmates suffer. They had to stand to attention while the SS guards walked around. Minor breaches of discipline often led to public floggings; serious breaches were punished with death. 2. At extermination camps, such as the Birkenau section of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka or Belzec, most of the new arrivals were gassed as soon as possible after entering the camp.

Upon arrival at the death camp the healthy looking Jews were sent to work at a work project as mogue attendants.

Yes, though it was very hard. Successful escapers include: * Hans Beimler (escaped from Dachau in 1933) * Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler (escaped from Auschwitz in 1944) * Rudolf Reder (escaped from Belzec in 1942) All these escapers wrote reports, books or pamphlets about the camps they escaped from. Witold Pilecki is worth mentioning. He deliberately got himself taken to Auschwitz in 1940 in order to find out what was going on there. He managed to escape in 1943. (Links to all four of these men below).

im not sure but there is one called the theresienstadt concentration camp.

In concentration camps, most Jews were worked and starved to death. The "camps" were not all the same. Transit camps like Westbrook outside of Amsterdam generally shipped it's unfortunate victims straight to Auschwitz-Birkenau--a death camp.. The "Camps" were gradations of probable death. Jewish Ghettos were also a part of The Final Solution. They were set up by the Nazis in any area with a population larger than a village or small town (The Warsaw Ghetto is the most well known) -- This was a horrible step before Jews were sent to death, concentration or a transit camp.

Buna. :) Hope this helps.

There were approximately 55,000 soldiers in all that ran the concentration camps. The number of camps varied through the time that concentration camps existed, towards the end there would have been 900 soldiers assigned to a camp.

Sorry I had to delete someones answer that said only 1 body was loaded in each oven, so heres some first hand testimony - WARNING - GRAPHIC - There were 5 Crematoriums at Auschwitz, but 52 Muffles, which are the openings allowing bodies to be fed into. They got very good at being able to fit the maximum amount of bodies in each muffle. They could burn 4-5 at a time continuously and sometimes 8 or more depending on the size of bodies. There are some sickening eye witness accounts coming first hand from the germans loading the ovens. This coming from a SonderKommando talks about how they would put the first 2 stacked, head to toe, face up but since the bodies arms and legs raise as they burn they would have to work fast to load the next bodies. They would burn the children with adults, loading a couple adults first so the children wouldnt slip through the grid bars into the ash bin, and then stack as many children as they could on top, sometimes as many as 8. This I quote "Women's bodies burned much better and more quickly than those of men. For this reason, when a charge was burning badly, we would introduce a woman's body to accelerate the combustion.".

Essentially, once the first bodies started to burn they would continue adding more to keep the fires hot. They learned to combine fat/skinny people and children to achieve maximum efficiency. (Sorry I want to say large people, but fat is fuel basically).

Usually it was cabbage soup, or some other watery liquid, with-out fats, tasteless.

Belzec was an extermination camp. In other words, its sole function was to kill. It is the only camp for which the Nazis' own final count of the numbers killed has been preserved: the final death toll at Belzec was 434,508 Jews killed and an unknown number of gypsies. There are only two (yes, two) known survivors, Rudolf Reder and Chaim Hirszman. After the war Reder wrote a book (in Polish) on Belzec and emigrated to Canada. Hirszman was murdered in 1946 by Polish anti-Semites, a few hours after giving evidence in court against Nazi SS men.

Amersfoort, Arbeitsdorf, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Banjica, Bardufoss, Bełżec, Bergen-Belsen, Berlin-Marzahn, Bernburg, Bogdanovka, Bolzano, Bredtvet, Breendonk, Breitenau, Buchenwald, Chełmno, Crveni krst Dachau, Drancy, Falstad, Flossenbürg, Fort de Romainville, Grini, Gross-Rosen, Herzogenbusch, Hinzert, Janowska, Jasenovac, Kaiserwald, Kaufering/Landsberg, Kauen, Klooga, Langenstein-Zwieberge, Le Vernet, Majdanek, Malchow, Maly Trostenets, Mauthausen-Gusen, Mittelbau-Dora, Natzweiler-Struthof , Neuengamme, Neuengamme-Alderney , Niederhagen, Ohrdruf, Oranienburg, Osthofen, Płaszów, Ravensbrück, Risiera di San Sabba, Sachsenhausen, Sajmiste, Salaspils, Sobibór, Soldau, Stutthof, Theresienstadt, Treblinka, Vaivara, Warsaw, and Westerbork.

They died from starvation; over-work; terrible experimentations on them; shot to death; tortured to death; gas chambers and many died from different diseases from the lack of food, filth they had to live in.

Given the widely known facts regarding the Holocaust and, for example, the fact that well over 1,000,000 Jews were murdered in Auschwitz, it is quite disturbing that such a question could be asked. However the question was asked and Auschwitz gives the answer.

Auschwitz was not "stationed" in Poland. Auschwitz is a German name for town of Oswiecim. When in 1939 Germans invaded Poland they changed all the Polish names to German names, Polish language was forbidden. Part of the camp was acctually an old army barracks, in 1940 the Germans built the concentration camp around it. In years 1940-42 the inmates were mainly Poles and Russian soldiers. Then in 1942 first Jewish transports came. A total of at least 1.1 million people were killed there, mostly Jews from all over Europe, then Poles, Gypsies, Russians. Auschwitz was located at the crossroads of rail system, easy way to transport people. Germans were practical. And since that most European Jews lived in Poland it was logical to place camp as such there. Instead in, let's say, Denmark where only 6-8 thousands Jews lived. Imagine problems caused by transporting 3 million Polish Jews to Denmark or other country, such as France. There were other camps, like and Majdanek were majority of prisoners were non-Jews.